Meridian Magazine : : Print

Young Polish Convert Helping Church Grow

Marcin Dabrowski, a 25-year-old LDS convert of three years, is in many ways typical of the 1,500 faithful Saints in Poland.

by Laurie Williams Sowby

WARSAW, POLAND -- It's a pleasant afternoon the last Saturday in July in Warsaw's Lazienki Park. Local citizens relax on park benches and lawns surrounding the pond and rose gardens in front of the huge Frederic Chopin monument. Next to the monument, under a canopy, sits an ebony grand piano which will serve as the solo instrument as artist after artist takes the stage in a Chopin marathon, the crowning event in a weeklong festival honoring Poland’s native son.

My 18-year-old son Rob and I are here today as guests of Marcin Dabrowski, a 25-year-old LDS convert who is serving as our guide during a three-day visit to Warsaw. Knowing our interest in music, he has arranged for us to attend this concert today as well as to play the piano in branch services Sunday morning.

We didn't plan on this concert, but it's a nice bit of serendipity -- as is the fact that the following day, Sunday, Aug. 1, 2004, marks the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, when citizens took up arms against their Nazi oppressors and held out for two months before being suppressed. We will be privileged to join in the anniversary of that historic event, which justifiably celebrates the resilient Polish spirit. We will see the newly opened Uprising Museum and the long wall on which are engraved the names of some 200,000 Warsaw citizens who died during the uprising.

We'll also visit Ogrod Saski (Saxon Garden), with its flowers, fountains, and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In this park on an early morning in 1977, President Spencer W. Kimball dedicated Poland for the preaching of the gospel. In a brief lesson on local Church history, Marcin tells us the Poland Warsaw Mission was created in July 1990 from the Austria Vienna East Mission, with Walter Whipple as its first president.

Earlier this day, Marcin has walked us into the rebuilt city center which overlooks the Wisla (Vistula) River, Poland's largest. On Sunday afternoons in the Old Town square, LDS missionaries set up their easels with information on the Church and invitations to join English or stop-smoking courses. They sing hymns to attract attention.

The lovely Old Town facades and peaceful ambiance of Warsaw's narrow cobblestone streets, wide boulevards and broad parks make it hard to believe the city once lay in ruins, 85 percent destroyed by the close of World War II. By contrast, here we sit in this beautiful park, awaiting via loudspeakers some of the most beautiful music ever written.

Marcin translates the announcer's words for us before the concert begins. His English is more than adequate, thanks to studies at Warsaw University, where he graduated in 2003 with a degree in Polish literature. He took Russian in elementary school for five years when Poland was still under Soviet rule and also speaks German. He is often called upon to translate Church talks or materials and to serve as a guide when English-speaking parents come to Warsaw to pick up their missionaries. Currently employed in the library at Warsaw University, Marcin's dream is to work for the church's translation department, bringing more LDS materials -- including a more complete hymn book -- to Poles in their native tongue.

As Marcin tells it, he was a "golden" investigator when the elders, whom he'd been passing on his street for four years, asked directions to the small grocery store -- and also if he'd like to hear about their church. He didn't smoke or drink and had no serious habits to break, and after meeting with missionaries for two months, was baptized in March 2001. Despite some flak from his divorced parents and step-siblings, he's never looked back.

Marcin says his story is typical of many of the other 1,500 Polish Saints who are the only members of the Church in their families. "It is not easy to be LDS in a country where the Catholic tradition is very strong." Yet he sees that young people are more open to change than their elders are. One of his goals is to strengthen other Church members with daily prayer and reading of the Book of Mormon.

"It's hard for me to imagine now another life," he says, noting his many Church friends. Much of his time once spent swimming or reading or listening to music is now filled with Church service, sometimes to the dismay of the widowed grandmother, a lifelong Catholic, whose tidy apartment he shares. (He notes she was given the apartment by the Polish government as a reward for her efforts in rebuilding the city after World War II.)

Since his baptism three and a half years ago, Marcin has served as branch executive secretary and counselor and is currently district executive secretary and a seminary teacher in weekly night classes. The classes are held at the Central (Warsaw First) Branch, which has the only free-standing LDS chapel in Poland. (Other branches meet in rented facilities.) Marcin happily recounts the history of the building, which was dedicated by then-Elder Gordon B. Hinckley in June 1991 and recently renovated to add a baptismal font, Relief Society and elders' quorum rooms, and other classrooms. The small chapel's doors are opened into the cultural hall nearly every week to accommodate the branch's steadily growing membership. Members hope the large, tree-filled lot next door, which is also owned by the Church, will one day have a temple on it.

They must now go to Freiberg, Germany, but the 11-hour bus trip hasn't dampened their enthusiasm for temple work. According to Marcin, the Freiberg Temple president regards the Polish Saints as some of the hardest working in the temple's area. "Whenever a temple trip is organized," says Marcin, "people from Poland are very excited. Many times, there are not enough places in the hotel next to the temple" to accommodate them all. "They're doing a lot of baptisms for the dead plus endowments," he adds.

For Marcin himself, who feels he prepared well in discussions with both missionaries and the mission president before making his initial trip to the temple for his own endowment a year ago, "The temple is a very special place where I can find answers for my eternal questions." He is grateful for the humble, faithful, hard-working missionaries in Poland and hopes to one day "find a wonderful eternal companion and have a great, strong LDS family." He concludes, "My testimony about this Church, Joseph Smith, and the priesthood grow stronger day after day."